The premiere of Little House on the Prairie was on September 11, 1974. It was one of the most popular and revered television programs of its time. Many still admire the Ingalls family today.
The première for Little House on the Prairie was not a typical television episode. The film was actually two hours long. If the network enjoyed it, they would order it as a series (in the entertainment industry, this is known as a back-door pilot).Obviously, the network liked it, and the series aired between 1974 and 1984.
Little House on the Prairie's pilot première captivated its new audience and won over the network, but it didn't realize this without a little drama first. Michael Landon, who portrayed Charles Ingalls and also served as the series' executive producer, writer, and director, was compelled to make a last-minute rewrite.Shooting the pilot for 'Little House on the Prairie'
In her memoir, Prairie Tale, the Laura Ingalls actor Melissa Gilbert recalls the pilot's production.She wrote, "Beginning in the second week of January 1974, we filmed scenes in Los Angeles and then near the Sierras in Northern California.
" "My mother and I treated it as a thrilling adventure, as it was." We were extremely far from home. It was frigid. And there were many individuals to meet and get to know, beginning with Michael, who was manifestly in charge and the center of the Little House universe."On location, the cast and crew were surprised by an unexpected snowstorm. The original script did not specify a snowstorm, so Landon had to rewrite it to accommodate the cast's new environment.
Before the first day of filming, "Michael rolled up his sleeves and rewrote the script on the fly after an unexpected snowstorm," wrote Gilbert.Melissa Gilbert's initial impression of Michael Landon while filming the pilot for 'Little House on the Prairie' was favorable.
Gilbert had encountered Landon during her Laura audition. She was immediately captivated by his charisma. During the pilot's production, she saw a different aspect of him.
"When one of the other executive producers wanted the children to perform the opening scenes barefoot, Michael responded with both a bark and a bite, causing me to pause and pray to God that I'm never on the receiving end of that rage," she wrote. Thankfully, Gilbert was not directly exposed to Landon's anger.
She wrote, "He could not have been warmer or more nurturing to me."
In addition, Gilbert "could hardly tear her eyes away from him." The teenage actress found Landon to be extraordinarily attractive and masculine.She wrote, "I had never seen a man built like him in person." "He was an inverted triangle, thick and muscular, and incredibly tenacious."Gilbert describes how she would observe Landon smoking cigarettes in a chain.
"On the first day of filming, while he was giving us instructions in the snow, he took out his cigarette and stubbed it in the palm of his glove," she wrote. "I wanted to rush over and ask my mother, 'Did you see that?' He did this frequently. Then he removed the tobacco, scattered it on the ground, and placed the filter in his jacket pocket, where he would accumulate a sizeable amount throughout the day and discard it later.
I'd never seen a man so masculine before. He was comparable to James Bond or Batman.The stressful reason 'Little House on the Prairie' creator Michael Landon had to rewrite the pilot at the eleventh hour
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